Between the Desert and the Sea
by Hagar
Summary: NS AU, sequel to And Who by Power, set eight months after and a month after the end of the war. When a fight breaks out within the team, Tori can either keep her family – or make good on a promise, and keep them safe.
1. Covered in Freedom

_Sequel to **And Who by Power**; will not make sense otherwise. **Warnings:** carpter F-bombing, extensive amounts of fucked-up-edness, considerable violence in later chapters. _

_Beta by the lovely and amazing Mara and Camille; all the remaining typos etc. are, of course, my fault._

_Enjoy, and please review!  
_

* * *

**A. Covered in Freedom**

_What is the difference of this night from all other nights?_

* * *

Summertime, mid-morning, Southern California. Tori clung to a piece of shade, claiming a last moment before the plunge. The motel was a sprawling thing, the scattered rooms a stark contrast to the land, their whiteness harsh and bright against the dark textured red of the earth.

A motel room number made a manhunt easier, but otherwise complicated the business of an execution.

She had left Blue Bay Harbor at sunrise, her habit of catching waves at first light good enough a cover to buy her two, maybe three hours. She had taken apart her cell phone and Cam would not give her away, but Tori did not think that the guys would not get on her trail.

She hadn't said goodbye. There was no need to say goodbye to the ones who understood or who would come to understand, and she did not want to alert Shane and Blake even though they might never speak to her again.

If Shane would speak at all.

She could have her family, or she could have them safe. Blake and Shane had made their choice in October. They had their covenant; she and Hunter had theirs.

_I trust you. As far as I can slit your throat._

_Don't hesitate._

_Trust me, I won't._

_Oh, I trust you. As far as you can slit my throat._

The room's door was unlocked. She pushed it open.

* * *

She sat in her car, breakfast in a paper bag cooling on the passenger seat, and stared at the handheld Cam had lent her. The tiny, scurrying signals of woodland creatures; the engine of her van, burning white-hot on the IR display, her own heat signature invisible next to it; and the one person-sized dot moving at a walking pace faster than she'd feared and not as fast as she'd hoped.

She was staring out the front window when Shane pulled the passenger door open, moved the food out of the way and sat down like someone expelling a long-held breath. Shane had just spent an entire night out, on his own, in the darkness, at Skyla's Point. Tori wanted him to not disappear more than she wanted to yell at him, and until she managed to work that knowledge from her brain to her gut she didn't trust herself to so much as look at him.

Paper rustling. The scent of yeast, butter and chocolate stronger than it had been a moment before. The relief at Shane having the presence of mind to eat made her turn her head.

_At some point,_ she thought, watching him tear the danish into bite-sized pieces and roll each one between his fingers before putting it in his mouth, _at some point, we are going to have to talk about this._

* * *

The sounds of Loony Toons drifted out into the street through the curtains, fleeting in a nearly-nonexistent breeze. Blake, she reasoned: Daphne would have had the AC running.

Shane did get out of the car, debris of the breakfast-to-go crammed into the paper bag, but then just stood there on the curb as Tori locked the doors, walked around the van's front and started down the garden path.

He returned her gaze when she turned around and looked at him. He cocked his head to the side, minutely. She wanted to say, _Don't be an idiot,_ but that was something Hunter might say. She ached to be able to say, _Ice cream and video games,_ but that Shane was long dead and not even the ghost of him was present at that moment.

Shane stepped forward, catching up with her.

They entered the house as shoulder-by-shoulder as the width of the door allowed, Shane half a step behind her. Blake was slouched deliberately on the couch, working through a pint of ice cream.

"Daphne's at Tiff's," he said.

Tiffany's was good. Tiffany's was great. Tiffany's parents had a mastiff, three cats and a swing set, and they were terrific silent allies.

The television emitted the slow shriek of a cartoon drop, a crash, and then _Meep meep!_

She turned around and gauged Shane's state of presence. "There're clothes upstairs if you want to grab a shower," she told him. The idle cheerfulness sounded brittle, but it was better than the alternatives. "You know where the clean towels are."

She only moved in to take the paper bag after he'd given her a tiny nod. By the time she returned from the kitchen he'd already gone upstairs. She went back and grabbed a bunch of grapes, a pitcher and two glasses before joining Blake on the couch, sliding low until their shoulders touched.

* * *

"We're running up the grocery bills again," remarked Blake.

She'd used the time both boys had been upstairs to fetch chicken, apples and extra potatoes from the grocery store. By the time Blake came downstairs the chicken and the potatoes were already in the oven, and she was sitting by the kitchen table, one foot up against the chair to her right and the newspaper spread all over.

The not-quite-a-smile his lips twisted around was instead of saying, _I don't know why your parents suffer us tripling their grocery bills and overrunning the house._ She looked away, because the answer still was, _They're just glad we're alive, and where they can see us._

Blake grabbed the chair at the head of the table, on the other side of the one she had her foot on.

"Apples?" he asked.

She shrugged. Homemade baked apple goods were the best bribe she could think of.

"His parents won't love the idea," Blake said.

"His parents can screw themselves up the ass with a shovel," she said without inflection, pushing the newspaper away. "They lean on my parents to have Shane back before it occurs to him on his own, I call Parker." The informed cooperation of Shane's older brother was well worth Eyesac's hell.

When Blake asked, "Any news?" a beat later, the hurt that leaked into his voice made her soften hers.

"No," she said, burying her face in her hands. "Cam doesn't have anything." She straightened, looked at him. "Shane didn't kick you out right away," she said.

"He made eye contact and didn't get out himself," said Blake dryly.

"Yeah, that's what I meant," she said, swinging around, putting her left foot up against the chair, too, and her palms flat against her knees.

"All the apple pies in the world won't make him talk," said Blake. He adjusted so that he was facing her with his whole body.

"I'll settle for keeping him indoors tonight."

"Yeah, one missing person is enough." Blake rubbed the back of his hand against his opposite cheek. "Fuck, Tori."

"Yeah," she said, hands moving down to her calves so that she was pretty much hugging her knees. "Because another fight from hell was really what we all needed."

The chair clattered against the floor as Blake dragged it a few inches. He leaned down, forearms against his thighs, putting his hands by her feet and his forehead nearly against hers.

"_Hunter,_" he said, and she could hear the tears.

Disappeared the night before. All they knew was that Shane and he had been together, and that Shane had pretty much run away as well. Any of "on his own," "in the dark" or "within five miles of Skyla Point" was something that Shane just did not do. But he came back and in a better shape than expected, while Hunter had been missing without an explanation for over twelve hours.

She leaned the rest of the distance forward, pressing her forehead against Blake's. "We'll get them back," she said.

She released her calves. Blake dug his elbows into his thighs so that he could lift his hands to catch hers.

She said it again, wishing it true against the despair that suddenly suffocated the kitchen: "We'll get them back."

* * *

"And you decided it was safe to leave them home alone why, again?" was Cam's greeting when she entered the room he claimed for a study.

"Because I'm that sure that you're keeping extra surveillance," she told him, dropping into the chair he had drawn out for her, probably well before she came upstairs. They were long past Cam attempting to pretend his telepathy away.

"You do realize that the only thing between Shane and evading satellite surveillance is deciding that he needs to."

She knew her jaw was too tight as she said, "Shane has his limits, too."

Cam's expression hardened to the point of breaking. "_That_ was different."

The words landed with the force of a double kick to the chest, all grief, fury and guilt, and Tori hissed instinctively and bared her teeth as she sucked in a breath. "Fuck you, Cam."

"Fuck you sideways," he replied tiredly. "I sincerely hope that you did not leave Blake and Shane on their own with Hunter unaccounted for so we could discuss metaphysics."

"No, I did that so we could discuss spilled milk."

"You do realize that it was you who brought this up."

"You said that the only limitation on the Karmanian power is what Shane cares enough to do. I brought a counter example."

Sensei had never quite recovered from the respiratory virus that Lothor had released three days before Valentine's. Shane had forbade a raid. Tori and Cam had thought otherwise. The serum Kapri had thrust into Tori's hand before letting her and Cam go, pretending she had never intercepted them, had only just stopped the illness from progressing. Tori and Dustin healed Sensei to the best of their ability, but there was only so much power that the fragile guinea pig body could take. The shock of being restored to human form had nearly killed Sensei. The damage went too deep, and all the healers in the Wind Clan couldn't fix it.

The inverse logic of the Karmanian power meant that Shane could drag Sensei back from the edge of death time and time again with little effort, but any attempt at proper healing would've burned Cam's father to ashes. Eventually, he had told Shane: _Enough._

Sometimes she wondered if it had only been three weeks. Other times, it was difficult to believe that it had been three weeks already.

She shouldn't have brought it up. "Sorry," she said, quietly.

"Accepted," Cam said, as quietly.

After a long moment he asked, in the same voice, "How is he?"

Tori shrugged, arms crossed on her chest. "Managing."

"Better than you expected."

"Yeah." When they found Hunter she was going to kill him. Unless… "Shane could find Hunter, right?" she asked slowly. "If he wanted to."

Cam eyed her warily. "You think he doesn't want to."

She shrugged defensively. Shane wasn't acting _hurt,_ he was acting _resigned._ She said so aloud.

"Alternatively," said Cam, "it was Hunter who walked away."

She considered. Shane not following if Hunter decided to break it off was marginally less implausible than Hunter running off if it was Shane who drew the line. "Then he walked away from Blake, too."

"If we don't find Hunter and fast, Blake will have to fight for the first place in that line."

Because running away would make Hunter unpopular with everyone. "Yeah, about that. Any brilliant ideas?"

Cam didn't shrug because shrugging was not a Cam thing to do, but he gave her a look that was more irritated than the usual. "He'll turn up eventually. I'm registering ninja activity in the entire state and then some."

Ninjas could cover great distances, but they also needed to rest after streaking for hundreds of miles. Cam knew exactly how much each of them was capable of, and if he thought that he had Hunter in range, Tori would trust to that. It wasn't like Hunter had packed for the trip. Eventually, he would have to resort to his ninja aspect or die.

Then again, if Hunter wanted to get himself killed, it wouldn't be the first time.

* * *

She returned home to Golden Melodies blasting from the living room radio.

"I'm home!" she called out from the front door.

"In here!" called her dad from the kitchen. "You're just in time," he added as she entered the room. He was fixing the leftover chicken into a salad. "Dinner's in twenty minutes."

"Is Mom getting Daph?" she asked. She stole a bite from the bowl, deliberately slow enough for her dad to swat her hand away.

"Mom's in the shower," he said. "Daph's upstairs with your boys."

She grabbed the appropriate number of plates and turned to the dining table. She very deliberately didn't blink. "Really?"

"Let's put it this way," he called over his shoulder. "If Shane doesn't actually enjoy playing tea party, he's pretending really well."

She opened the cupboard and grabbed three glasses with each hand. "How're they doing?"

"See for yourself."

"Okay." She set each glass on one of the placemats. "Back in a minute."

Upstairs she found Blake lounging against the wall in the hallway, keeping an eye on Daphne's half-open door.

She leaned her shoulder blades against the wall across from him, her arms loose to the sides of her body. His eyes didn't flick over to her as he said, "Could be reactive."

_Or could be initiative,_ she completed silently, but it was the worse option that Blake had said out loud. "But?" she asked.

They spoke softly and quietly. Shane could still hear if he tried to, but that was why they kept their inflection light, affectionate.

Blake's lower lip stretched in something that wasn't a smile. "Tea party," he said.

It could be the angle, so much of his weight against the one shoulder; Blake was better than that, though, and Tori didn't think she was imagining his shoulders being hitched too close together.

* * *

The guest room couch converted into a full-sized bed, and they also had a cot. Her mom had let Blake and Shane sort that out for themselves. It worked out pretty much the way Tori had expected it to: each of the boys curled up on his side of the open couch, with the cot made up and mussed to look as if someone had slept in it.

Back to a solid surface and the windows wide open were standard Shane behavior; piling on three or four blankets too many for the season, less so. Blake's pajama top had been a concession to Tori's parents, discarded once the room's door closed and messily folded on top of Blake's backpack; he didn't ditch the pajama shorts, though, which wasn't any less unusual with the August heat.

The light from the street lamps outside wasn't enough to make out the scars, not even with a ninja's eyesight. _Broken bones we can fix,_ she thought as she settled on her side behind him, _and it'll never show in an x-ray._ She snaked her arm across his body, palm against his stomach. _But scars, scars can take years._ Spooning, her face fit between his neck and his shoulder. Blake had used her soap, as he always did when staying over. On her it smelled like kelp and musk; on him it was salty, sweet almost, dry.

Either way, it still smelled like the ocean.

* * *

"Are these fresh?"

"Do I love you?"

_Because if you're going to show up on someone's doorstep at six sharp,_ thought Tori, _the cookies had better still be hot._ She stepped aside, unblocking the doorway. "Come on in. And quiet." They didn't have school but her parents still had work to go to, and they wouldn't be as amenable to fresh cookies.

Marah stuck her chin up, huffed, and stepped in, slinking her way across the short hallway to the kitchen. She put her carrier bag – kittens chasing butterflies across a pink field with rainbows – on the counter, handed Tori the plastic box with the cookies and began unpacking the bag.

Oranges, because Marah was picky about her juice; more cookies; small loaves of rye bread from Shane's favorite bakery; half a pound of Cam's coffee, pre-ground, for the nicking of which Marah would catch half as much hell as Tori would have; and six quarts of milk, preceding –

Marah smirked as she placed the three boxes of homemade granola one on top of the other. "Am I the Queen of Breakfast, or am I the Queen of Breakfast?"

"You're the Queen of Crazy, is what you are," said Tori, laying her elbows down on the counter. "When did you get up today, four?"

"How many hours did you sleep tonight, four?"

Telling Marah to fuck off would screw Tori over with both Cam and Dustin, but Tori was nearly tired enough and frustrated enough to do so anyway. Which was, in all likelihood, the reason that Marah had arrived armed with the holy shield of homemade granola.

"We woke up a lot, between the three of us."

"M-mm," said Marah. "Can I set the table with the flowery set?"

* * *

Cam, when she called him, said she'd been gone from the room for four minutes and forty-three seconds. It was more than enough time for Shane to wake up, get dressed and get out. Shane had arrived at his parents' house in seven minutes and twelve seconds, and was out the door again at eight minutes and five seconds, having picked something up from his room and headed right out again. That he'd gone to the skate park as she said he would gave Tori enough confidence to head up to the Academy for the day.

In the final battle Lothor had set his ship to self destruct, hoping to rid himself of a captive Cam and feed the life of his remaining troops into the Abyss of Evil. Kapri had released Cam, and the two of them had hacked the systems and redirected the force of the blast to undo the stasis lock. They might never know why Lothor had not stopped at people, but the entire Academy – buildings and gardens and all – had been restored that day as if nothing had ever happened.

Some days Tori would sit at one of the meditation pagodas, observing it all; other days she'd spend at the gardens, tending to the pebbles and the miniature streams; on yet other days she'd avoid the Academy altogether; and sometimes – since Sensei's death – sometimes she would go to the farthest pagoda and weep.

This was none of these days.

She stepped through the portal with her head held high. One year before she would have been late for class; one year before she was a first-year student, on the verge of expulsion for all her promise. Now she was one of the six who had fought the war, her master's robes a badge of honour as much as merit, and her Clan Council seat more so.

Her seat exceeded quorum. So did Cam's, Dustin's and Shane's. She did not have to attend Council meetings, and she certainly did not have to be on time. Mostly, though, she did.

Sensei Watanabe had died. The Council had to choose a new Chief. They would have to do so soon, and if Tori wanted any influence on the matter then she had to behave as a councilmember should.

Whether or not she intended to keep her seat after.

* * *

Dustin was absent from council meeting that day. In itself it would have been nothing to worry about, but it was one of Dustin's usual days to attend and Cam had not volunteered an explanation. Tori knew better than to ask for one. Dustin was indeed at Storm Chargers when she came over after lunch, deliberately picking a slow hour at the store.

Dustin picked the engine he was done with up from the bench and set it aside. He must have seen her, but he didn't acknowledge it. When she drew close enough that they could speak quietly he said: "I'm not talking to you."

"Thanks for the granola," she said anyway. Complimenting Dustin for Marah's work was low, but usually effective.

Usually.

Dustin hauled an entire bike up next and did not reiterate that he was not speaking with her. Which was a good thing if it meant that her gratitude was not rejected, or a bad thing if it meant he thought she got the hint.

"Help me fix things?" she offered. That was the way it went: Dustin outlined it, and she cuffed people upside the head for it.

"Still not talking to you."

She wasn't being rejected, then. Dustin just needed to work through the anger first. Being that Marah had shown up with a full-blown breakfast then either this was about something that had completely blindsided Tori, or Marah would cash out the full guilt value later.

Knowing Marah, the latter was more likely to be true.

What she wanted to say was _So you just decided I'm not going to change my ways anyway so you won't even give me a chance?_ but that wasn't going to help any. She couldn't fix it if Dustin wouldn't tell her what was wrong. After a long moment, that was what she said: Dustin was lousy at rejecting honesty, and she had grown lousy at offering it.

"Yeah, see, actually, you don't want to fix it," he said. "You don't want to fix it so bad, it, like, never even occurred to you."

They'd had that argument more times than she could count.

"I don't have any prejudice on who messed up this time."

"Yeah, but you don't care, either."

She wanted to punch something. She needed to punch someone. She handed Dustin a wrench instead. He grabbed the one end of the wrench even as she released the other, and that was all the forgiveness she was going to get out of him.

That, and "Go grab a soak before you summon a tsunami down on our heads or something."

She coaxed a smile out of herself, because if he was going to try then so would she. "You do know tsunamis are caused by earthquakes."

"Yeah, so?" Which could mean _You can still bring a freak tide down on our heads_ or _I'm this close to snapping and causing one myself._

"You wouldn't happen to know what the fuck happened, would you?"

"I don't care what-the-fuck happened," he said, tacking the words at the tail of one another like "what the fuck" was a technical term. He set down the wrench and laid his palms flat against the bench, shoulders tense, looking away from the bike but down, not sideways, and certainly not turning to face her. "I don't fucking care."

Infighting: Dustin only ever cared for it to stop, not for how and why it started. If she hadn't been distracted by Blake falling apart on her, by Shane disappearing before her eyes again, she would have remembered that before.

"We can't fix them, Dustin," she said, softly. "It doesn't work that way."

"Like you ever tried."

She inhaled sharply and spat, "Fuck _off,_" in a hiss that would have made anyone but her teammates duck for cover out of sheer survival instinct. She was two-thirds of the distance to the door before she even knew what she was doing, before Dustin stopped her with a "Told you so!"

She stopped where she was; forced her hands to not clench and unclench; turned around; walked back.

"You said you're not talking to me," she said, putting careful spaces between the words. "I'm this close to not talking to you right back."

"You don't care to fix this," he said. He still hadn't picked up his tools. He was, however, looking her straight in the eye.

"I can't fix this."

"Same difference."

Her fist came down on the bench, rattling the tools to all hell, and it was all she could do to refrain from hitting Dustin because the same-difference of "will" and "can" was one of Shane's lines and Dustin had just quoted Shane at her when Shane was – "Shane is going to get himself killed."

"So you'll get someone else killed instead?"

Her lungs locked. She couldn't breathe. Dustin couldn't possible _know – _

"Because that's how it's going to end," continued Dustin. "You get willing to give up on people, you can't know who it's gonna be."

He didn't know. Her lungs unlocked. There was nothing she could say which wouldn't be a lie, so she spread her arms to the sides instead.

Dustin's face twisted. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

* * *

She woke up the next morning to Blake in her bed and the pre-dawn light on her face. Tori stayed put, muscles cold with sleep, breathing in the mix of Blake's dry warmth and the stinging, citrus scent her hair had left on the pillow. For three breaths, in and out, she believed that if she would just stay like that, if she could only keep that, then it would be all right.

But it wouldn't be, and she couldn't. She had to get through the day without snapping, without doing something that she might regret later or that her team would have to apologize for in her name, and to that end she needed to get herself and her board to the ocean while it was quiet and uncrowded and as safe as anything would ever be.

Anything, but Blake and her, like this, if only her parents weren't two doors down and hell to be had if they knew. She planted a kiss on Blake's shoulder before she untangled herself and slid down to the foot of the bed, careful to not wake him. She didn't bother to close the door all the way as she padded down the hallway.

Cam would have woken her up if Shane was not where he was supposed to be, but she needed to see it with her own eyes. She stood in that doorway a while, watching the slight rhythmic motion that was Shane breathing – curled up lump in the middle of the bed, blankets around and over him like a soft shield – before she could make herself turn away. She pushed open Daphne's door, too, and took the moment to kneel by her baby sister's bed, brush a stray lock of hair that wasn't really there from her forehead, just because she could.

She thought it was noticeably lighter when she finally returned to her room and closed the door behind her. Her senses weren't Ranger-sharp, anymore, but ninja-sharp was something, too. She had pulled the nightgown over her head, dropping it on the chair's seat, and was reaching for her swimsuit top when the screen of her cell phone lit up with a text message.

She snapped the top on before reaching for the phone. She didn't recognize the number, but the message –

Trained adrenaline reaction: her heartbeat slowed, instead of picking up. She replaced the cell phone on her desk, finished dressing, packed everything she would need into a sturdy Academy bag she had stashed in the back of her closet, disassembled her phone and packed that up too.

By the time she walked downstairs and fixed herself breakfast – bread with honey, granola without milk – she had already caught up to her own reactions, knew that she wasn't really thinking. _Better this way,_ she decided. She washed the dishes and left them to dry, just as she would have done if she was really going out to surf as, ten minutes before, she had been. She even brushed her teeth, but she drove her van to Storm Chargers rather than to the beach.

The guys would catch up, but it would take them between two and four hours. Cam would get it earlier, might already know that she was going off-grid, but Cam would understand and not give her away.

She didn't pause until she closed the van's door behind her. Then she stopped. She had promised she would never let things get out of hand again. She had promised it to herself, long before she had promised it to Hunter. These promises she'd spoken out loud. She'd promised to Shane, too, and to Blake, that this was one hurt they would never have to survive again. These promises she made silently, in the relative privacy of her heart and mind, because the price of preventing one hell was –

The sun had risen. She had to go.

She didn't know if it was that she couldn't cry, or that she wouldn't.


	2. The One You Can't Betray

_I am very sorry for the delay. This part was supposed to go live to weeks ago (and it had, over at AO3), but this site has been having Issues. And thanks to Paisley, who told me who to get around the bug.  
_

_Chapter-specific **warning:** a flashback to Tori's time in captivity, including mentions of torture and somewhat graphic content; slipping sanity all around; and an intense hand-to-hand combat scene_.

_Beta by the lovely and amazing Camille and Mara. (All remaining typos etc. are, of course, my own fault.) The combat scene couldn't have happened without Opher's help._

_This chapter's title from Tori Amos's song, _Parasol_._

* * *

**B. The One You Can't Betray**

_I and not a messenger; I, and no other._

* * *

The door opened to a view of a tan-papered wall to her left, at the end of which was an open door leading to a bathroom not much larger than a big closet. At the right edge of her field of vision was the long side of a full bed, dark bedspread and dark-cased pillows over a lighter sheet, the exact colour of which was impossible to tell; there was a window set in the same wall as the door but the blackout curtains had been drawn shut, casting the room into near-darkness. The backlight from the door made Tori's shadow stretch long, broken by the bed.

Hunter was nowhere in sight.

Obviously.

If Hunter hadn't been running a death wish he wouldn't have sent her that text. It could be one last attempt to protect the ones he claimed to love before something in him that had been bent too much for too long snapped, or it could be yet another attempt to get someone else to do the job for him.

Obviously Hunter wouldn't give her a clear shot; wouldn't be able to, for the same reasons that he hadn't gone ahead and gotten it done with himself.

Tori angled to the left, giving herself as wide a view as she could: Hunter was not on the bed and not right by the door, but there was room enough between the bed's other long side and the far wall, and a drawer chest under the window wall which created a blind zone too big for comfort.

She put down her bag – cautiously, silently – and, back to the wall, slid into the room.

The space between the drawer chest and the corner was clear. Hunter had to be between the bed and the far wall, then. Tori let the door slide and click shut and advanced slowly, feet gliding against the thin carpet without ever lifting from it, keeping her back to the wall – even if that wall had a window and a bulky chest – until she was at the other corner and could see the dark form of Hunter, squeezed in between the wall and the bed.

Back to the wall, knees drawn up, forehead lying against said knees as if with pain or defeat, his right arm curled loosely against his knees and his left, which was nearer to her, hanging to the side of his body. It was a thoroughly miserable posture and, by the look of those shoulders, he'd been that way a while.

Tori was not impressed. Hunter hadn't just chosen the best tactical position in the room, he'd also settled in an easily defensible posture. He'd also left the door open and texted her to get it done with, and the mixed signals were making her teeth ache.

Tori forced her jaw to unclench. Then she aimed a low, sharp kick to Hunter's temple, being that it was at the perfect height.

It was also the only proper target Hunter presented and, given everything else, Tori had fully expected the wrenching pain of Hunter intercepting her calf with his elbow and pulling _down_ even as he made to rise_ up_, and she took that force and added it to her own, stomping down hard.

The heel of her boot dug into soft flesh, missing the vulnerable collarbone by mere millimeters, and the miss meant she had less leverage than she'd counted on, propelling herself forward and up to smash her other knee in Hunter's face –

– and that could be why Hunter's fist caught her dead center in her lower abdomen, momentum cut off and pain seizing all the way to her spine as she twisted in midair, trained instinct faster than anything else, fast enough to allow her to land on her feet two and a half feet from Hunter, who had in the meantime risen to his feet –

– and was only beginning to catch up with what was happening.

If Tori would've waited for the visual confirmation of Hunter's expression, she would have never reached in time for the key ring – orphaned keys and a couple of small tin bells attached to a soft, red rubber urchin ball, which Tori had arranged specifically to catch attention and more specifically to catch Hunter's. As it was, though, she'd had it in her hand as soon as she touched ground and tossed it across Hunter's field of vision, so that it would have landed on the bed if Hunter hadn't reached with his right hand to grab it, and by doing that he opened himself wide, turning his head, just a little bit but_ enough_ –

– Enough for Tori to slide in, grab the elbow of his injured left arm with her right and drive all of that momentum through her left fist to Hunter's sternum, and that earned her distraction enough, time enough, to turn Hunter the rest of the way around and down in that narrow space between the bed and the wall, landing with her knees slamming into the small of his back, left palm pressing down on his left shoulder while her right had never left her hold on that elbow.

There was a reason that this was the hallmark law enforcement pinning. Hunter wasn't getting up unless she let him go or fucked this up. That the arm she had twisted behind his back was attached to a shoulder that, not three seconds before, had taken a heel with all of Tori's weight behind it, was further advantage.

Satisfaction – bitter, full and heavy like absinthe – welled up with an exhale as Tori secured her grip; on inhale, Tori had enough distance between herself and her emotions to read the implications and potential weaknesses in the way she'd handled things up to that point; knew that Hunter would recognize and react to the same; and by the next exhale she committed herself to a strategy.

* * *

_Time_ meant nothing. Time was something that Tori had consciously let go of, had considered the price attached to the effort involved in maintaining the perception thereof and decided that she had better uses for her reserves.

The absence of time could be a doorway for despair if one let oneself wonder how long it had been, how much longer until it would end, formed the timelessness into an eternity. Instead Tori let it all collapse into the one moment, only a _now,_ time never longer than three seconds suspended in nothingness. She didn't need the memories, didn't need to wonder _how many_ and _how long_ – needed to not know that – because what she needed was to make it through this second, and through the next one, and to fucking hell with everything that wasn't _right this right now don't speak don't give_.

Right then and right there she was lying on her side on a metal mesh that was dark even before it had been splattered all over with blood – _my blood,_ _don't think about it_ – her arms and legs pulled and bound behind her: wrists together, ankles together and then ankles and wrists to each other and to something that she had never seen but could be kicked freely around.

She had probably woken up that way. The chair was for carving her face. Hunter didn't like walls, because these either limited his access or put her head at a height too close to his own; didn't like suspension for a reason she hadn't yet figured out; and so it was this, more often than not, sometimes on this side and sometimes on the other, that and lost teeth reset, bleeding stopped, the only indications that there was something other than _right here right now – _

_– don't think about it. _Wondering about that kind of thing could undo her. _Time_ wasn't safe, time was the enemy's, and what Tori needed was to stay the fuck _alive._

To not count the number of times that booted feet crossed in and out of her field of vision. To not think that the person to whom those feet were attached had not yet said a word, because then this would have happened before and would happen again and she couldn't think about that, there had to be only _now._

"That took a lot of arrogance," Hunter said.

She knew the sentence that came next and the one that came after that. Knew them before he'd said them – before he'd said them _this time,_ awareness looped over memories torn apart by starvation and injury and further shredded by her resolve. However long it had been between her gaining consciousness and Hunter beginning his litany had been long enough for her to summon this defense. The knowledge that she'd heard this so many times that she couldn't recall not knowing it by heart hovered in her mind but didn't touch her.

The final sentence of the spoken litany would be a question and then would come the other litany, the beating. These she couldn't predict beyond knowing that it would come, and it would hurt, and she was staying conscious through it for longer than she had been before, part because Hunter was getting better and part because she was learning.

She hadn't _tried_ to beg, early on. She had begged. She had pleaded. She had wept and screamed. If Hunter had wanted to break her then he'd had her from the go, because then she would have done anything to make it _stop._

She was rarely awake and _alone_. They fixed those things that could kill her or that would hurt to break again, but if she hadn't gotten a grip and started using these minutes of calm while Hunter ranted off to rally the little power she had – the air was dry and she had been kept on the edge of dehydration since being captured – then she would have already lost any chance of ever regaining even a semblance of a normal range of motion.

Other thoughts came while she knotted tiny amounts of power into tendons and muscles, rigid and burnt up from abuse. Thoughts like _He's talking to himself,_ which she'd accepted before but still occasionally flitted through, and _Who does he think I am?_ which could still, if she was foolish enough to pay attention to it, wreck the spell she wove about herself.

Because the Tori in Hunter's mind, the Tori he'd captured and was killing slowly, that Tori was not her. She hated that other woman, too: would have hated her if she was real, and hated the idea of her for what it wrecked. That other woman had deliberately seduced Blake, having judged and found him useful and vulnerable to her; had knowingly cut him off from his living brother and the loyalty he owed to his murdered parents; and had done so out of loyalty to a corrupted sensei, a loyalty that may or may not have been unwitting, and on her own whim.

That other woman wouldn't have cried and begged, because she knew what she was doing, a full-blown ninja and kunoichi who made her own choices and initiated the game knowing what it was. Of course Hunter had ignored or mocked Tori's terror and pleading: from the woman he was fighting these were a decoy, a deliberate attempt on his sympathy launched by someone who, he had every reason to believe, had none of her own.

And in the beat of breath and air as Hunter strode forward, towards her, and she let her meager self-healing attempts dissipate, Tori knew – knew with absolute clarity and doubtful lucidity – how she could turn the game around. She could hurt Hunter back, and as the moment collapsed and the continuity of time resumed, she knew exactly how to do so.

Two and a half feet of distance. Hunter paused. "Got anything to say?" he demanded, voice dead with all those emotions Tori had stopped naming so long ago.

And the Other Woman replied, "You're actually stupid enough to believe he ever loved you."

* * *

That she hadn't smashed his face when she slammed him down was on purpose. His left shoulder had to be burning; her knees had hit at least one kidney if not both when she knocked him down; he was still recovering his breath from that fist to the sternum; and she had no intention of wasting the agony of a broken nose and shattered teeth, or the threat thereof, so early into the situation.

Her left arm slid up as she bent down, coming to rest by his neck – a reminder of what she could do – as she hissed, close by his ear: "Anything to say?"

She continued without giving him a chance to reply, shifting smoothly from a travesty of a purr to businesslike, if still soft: "We both know how this ends. You're a sucky suicide, did anyone ever tell you that?"

"You're a crap assassin," his voice was stable, but scraped raw, "or didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

She said nothing. Certain she had his attention, she pulled up, her hand sliding back to its original position on his shoulder.

"You think it's funny," he said, dubious under the scathing.

"Maybe," she replied. The tone of voice she aimed for she'd learned from Marah, but she obviously needed more practice as the word came out in something more like Kapri's drawl. She backed up the supposed playfulness by tugging harder on his arm for a micro-second.

"You think it's fucking awesome," he said, and that tone – sarcastic and contemptuous – was trademark him. "Making a point of how I should never have trusted you."

"Don't worry." That inflection was pure Her, unmistakable for anyone else's. "You aren't walking out of here, no matter what."

"You're not actually stupid, Tori."

She pressed down on his shoulder simultaneous with the tug, amplifying the twist on his arm. Noting he managed to limit his response to a single sharp inhale, she asked: "Using my one chance is 'stupid', now?"

"Playing when it counts is," he said, voice just tight enough for Her to notice it. "You don't do that."

"Maybe you got me wrong." She didn't say 'again' out loud but it was there in the way she said it, in the way her fingers tightened.

"Maybe you're freaking out about the After."

"You wish." The inflection was poison so it didn't matter if her words were too bitter, too honest.

"Then why the fuck am I still breathing?"

"Because I don't fucking believe a fucking word you fucking say." She slipped: these were Tori's words, Tori's toneless inflection, not Hers.

"Not convincing enough for you?" he demanded.

"Try again," She said.

"As pleases the mistress," he said, mocking, and what that word did to her She couldn't hide. He aimed for it. "I don't underestimate you," he continued, in that gentle, vicious tone Tori had not heard since Back Then. "I never have. You really should've remembered that. In your perfect world you'd bleed me out over a week. I'm still breathing, so there's something you want more."

"You never did underestimate me," she said, in a voice that blurred the edges, the voice of her true fury.

"So tell me, which is worse: that you're this scared, or that I gave you good reasons to be?"

"You're slipping."

"So you didn't just flinch."

"Playing a player is a problem," she said, conversational again, and she couldn't keep track of who was speaking but it didn't seem to matter, anymore. "Maybe you're goading me to kill your lying ass because you've had enough of being too pathetic to do it yourself, or maybe that's what you're trying to make me believe so I'd let you go. I don't underestimate you either," her voice hardened, "and smart money says you won't try with honesty for something you can get with a lie."

That took him full three seconds to process. "You _promised._" He sounded hurt. He sounded betrayed. It twisted sweet and heavy as the real thing even knowing what she'd just said.

She let herself suck in that big, obvious breath because, honest giveaway or not, it furthered Her game. "You're right," She said, playfully, knowing he'd know it for a move and meaning for him to know. "Twisting the knife is so much fun."

"Blake has good taste," he said without inflection. "You would've done worse if that was you, back then."

Her hand was in his hair, pulling his head up – to smash his face or snap his neck, whichever way her rage would break – and why she didn't, how she stopped at the last fraction of a second even before she started thinking again, was a complete mystery to her. She held his head at the top of that arc until there was anything in her mind but blindingly white fury, then slammed his cheek down hard against the coarse carpet. She had to force her fingers to untangle from his hair, vainly trying to make it less like the last throe of a seizure, before she could comb Her fingers though his too-long hair, gently, tenderly, deliberately, smoothing the hurt she'd inflicted.

His free right hand spasmed, wholly involuntarily, digging and grasping for a hold that was impossible to get on the paper-thin carpet.

"What's wrong?" she asked in Her first voice, a near exact facsimile of his's own torture-voice, the one that had told Tori of Her, Back Then. She could feel his body tense beneath her, could feel the resistance She had just made him summon for the purpose of crumbling it to dust. Her fingers were still combing through his hair, scraping gently at his scalp every second or third motion. "What happened three days ago? I really do want to know."

It could have been a snort, but it came several seconds too late and sounded more like a valiant attempt than the genuine article. "And you wonder why I believe in you."

"I won't play nice for long."

"You never play nice." The ridges and edges of emotion were becoming clearer under his thinning veneer of amusement. "You just pretend to because it works so well for you."

"Unlike what you keep saying," she said gently, Her voice belying Her words, "I'm not actually like you."

His huff was real, this time. "Yeah. I don't play at playing nice. So which of us – "

"I asked you a question." Her words cut his off cleanly, like a straight-edged knife. Her hand gripped in his hair with the selfsame sharpness, and that was, finally, _it_. "And you're avoiding it."

It wasn't _trust,_ the emotion driving that shift that wasn't a shudder. Trust was a choice in a way that this wasn't. Shane would argue – had argued – that it was, and Tori and Dustin that it wasn't: that when at some point, at one moment, everything had run _out_ and you've done what you did before it could happen _to_ you in the moment after – that that wasn't a choice, anymore, not even a final one.

"I can't be on my own, Tori." It was not honesty when all other options were gone, but there was no other word for it, so _honest_ was what she judged his words to be. "And he said I should walk away."

She hadn't let go the hand that was in his hair because he was like Shane that way: the moment she let go he would slip into the nether and she won't be able to get another clear cue, verbal or otherwise, out of him. "Why did he say that?"

"He's better off without me."

That, too, was something Tori more often associated with Shane or, sometimes, with Marah's worse days: something too far out to be called faith, let alone certainty.

She took pains to keep her voice at that subliminal level, like fishing hooks, because one imperfect move would send him beyond language's reach. "Did he say that, Hunter?"

"Yes."

The shudder that ran down her spine was completely honest, completely involuntary. So was the way her eyes stung and the muscles of her face pulled, the impulse to release that grip and weave her fingers through his hair again, because she was going to kill him and all he wanted was to not be alone.

"Did Shane say that on his own?"

"Yes." She'd imagined that a dying person would sound like that. Now she knew.

There were half a dozen different ways she could kill him from that position. Direct elemental assault was the riskiest option, as a ninja's resistance to that kind of invasion was as unstoppable as one's breathing instinct. On a good day Hunter could throw her across the room with little to no effort even though, being a water ninja, she had the best possible access to another's body.

This was as far from a good day as it got.

When it was done, she let go of him and, half a second later, got to her feet. She had to use the bed to stand up but she managed to make it across the room to her bag, which she'd left by the door, bend to pick it up and then walk back without having to stabilize herself against anything else.

She didn't rummage through the bag for the three separate plastic bags in which she'd put her cell phone, the battery and the sim card until she was safely seated at the foot of the bed, feet planted against the floor.

She assembled the phone, turned it on and called Cam's number. Cam, predictably, picked up even before the first ring.

Cam said nothing; for long seconds, neither did she.

"How's it going there?" she asked, finally. Her voice sounded tiny to her own ears; any of her teammates would hear it, too, but only they and, perhaps, Marah.

"I haven't been eaten alive yet." Pause, deliberately to let that minute comfort sink in. "You?"

"I've had worse days." She leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees, supporting her head with her left hand as her right held the phone to her ear. There were more words, but she couldn't make them even within her mind.

"You had." A prompt.

"In October."

"That long?"

The Valentine's virus that had nearly killed Sensei, and Cam and she would have been captured if not for Kapri; Eyesac, weaving a perfectly solid, believable nightmare reality for what had felt like days before Cam had pulled her, Dustin and Shane out one by one; Hunter getting lost in the twilight between death and life, and the undiluted horror of searching for him and wrenching him back; Shane going missing for her birthday and the day before, then turning up with an alien power in his blood; and Sensei dying, not a day after they had finally destroyed Lothor and freed the other ninjas.

Was this the worst day she'd had since Cam and Marah had broken the rest of them out of Lothor's ship?

"Yes." The word fell from her tongue heavy like the hundred tons of Dustin's lion hammer when mounted at the front of the Storm Striker. "Cam?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think Shane would – " it would be easier to ask Cam to pick the words from her mind, except for how it wouldn't be, "would he have – broken it off and told Hunter to walk away?"

"What are you asking, Tori? What are you really asking?"

She didn't know what to say.

It was almost a full minute before Cam said, "He didn't. Hunter said that Shane should walk away. Shane replied that Hunter might as well do the walking himself."

It took one, two, three second before she could will her lungs to move again. "Did Shane tell you that?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"_Cam._" Her exhaustion was smothered in a split second. "What did you just do?"

"Shane gave blanket permission if I ever think it's needed, Tori, and he meant it," snapped Cam, and even through her anger and horror she knew he wasn't nearly as okay with this as he claimed, and would continue to claim, to be. "I'd say that if any circumstance could ever justify using that consent then this is it."

He didn't tack anything mean or outright defensive at the tail end of that, and Tori replied to it by waiting until the exhaustion settled back in before saying, "I need you to talk to the Thunder Academy."

"Tori?" asked Cam, cautiously.

She straightened her back and barked a short, bitter laugh at the surprise in his voice. "I didn't, Cam. Just because he wasn't lying didn't mean he was telling the truth. I'm – the Thunder Academy's closer, and I'm – "

"It would also be a political disaster if we go through this here," said Cam. The matter-of-factness of his voice rolled across her mind like a promise.

"Thanks," she said.

"I've got your location," he said. "I'll call them as soon as I hang up with you. Wait twenty minutes before departing. That ought to be long enough for them to prepare for you."

"Understood."

"Tori? You didn't break any promises today."

"Cam," she said without inflection, "if I was there right now I'd sock you in the eye so hard my fist would break the orbit, go straight into your brain and come out on the other side of your skull."

"Which would be why I have, in fact, said that."

She let her shoulders hunch, arms pressing close against her torso as she closed her eyes and pressed the thumb, index and middle fingers of her left hand hard against her eyelids. "Lie better."

"Fuck you, Tori," he said, voice thin with all the things they knew to be true and never said out loud. "Seriously. Fuck you."

And suddenly, Tori couldn't take it anymore. She fell the rest of the way forward, elbows brushing the sides of her knees as she slid off the bed and unto the floor, back against the bed, knees drawn up against her chest and her left arm encircling her knees, cupping the elbow of her right, with which she held the phone up to her left ear, keeping herself in a tight ball. She knew it was that manner that wasn't honesty, in which she said: "I love you, too."


	3. Going Over Jordan

_Final part for this story. **Warnings** for carpet F-bombing, one intense combat scene, and a hell of a lot of general fucked-up-ness._

_Beta by the lovely and amazing Mara and Camille. __(All remaining typos etc. are, of course, my own fault.) The combat scene couldn't have happened without Opher's help._

* * *

**C. Going Over Jordan**

_In each and every generation must one consider oneself to have egressed from Egypt_

* * *

She had only been to the Thunder Academy once before. It was enough for Tori to find her way to the Academy, onto the Grounds and to Sensei Susumu Omino's office on the top floor of the staff building, where she dropped out of shadow space at the very doorway, Hunter's body laying mostly in the corridor as she held his ankle loosely in one hand.

The silence that abruptly swallowed the building was distant, if satisfying. Most of her attention was on the elderly man seated on cushions by a low table on the other side of the spacious room.

He didn't startle, not quite: just the hint of his head having snapped up at her approach, his expression perhaps too neutral, hand pausing in mid-air for a split second before he put down the pen, stood up and crossed the room in easy, even-paced strides.

"Please forgive my impertinence," he said, "but for a moment, I thought you must be one of my clan." He paused at three feet of distance and openly considered where her hand held Hunter's ankle. "I am far more used to us being mocked for our sense of dramatics by the followers of the Way of the Wind, rather than be outdone by you."

"It serves a purpose," she said. The glance she tossed behind her shoulder was anything but surreptitious, intentionally so. "A few hundred meters aren't much on top of a few hundred miles, but, y'know."

That kicked all the Thunder masters in the building out of their shock. Most resumed what they were doing before, but a few hurried in the direction of Omino's office.

Omino's expression was inscrutable. Hers was not.

Sensei Omino had raised them, Blake had said. The man now stood before her, his regard on Tori rather than on the beaten, sick man he'd trained, whose unconscious body was trailing behind her.

She was involved with the other man that Omino had raised and she'd proudly court his disdain for her lack of discretion for this: for Omino to look at her and see, writ large in her eyes, her face, her stance:_ I measure you by my Sensei, and I find you lacking._

* * *

They set up Confinement in a building at the edge of the Grounds, single-story, with decked floors, old-style sliding partitions instead of doorways and a patio in its center.

She'd asked for lunch and, half an hour later, could scent a hot meal approaching. She didn't expect the courier to be Leanne, but knowing that, it was unsurprising that Omino's daughter had sat down. Neither woman said a word: not when Leanne entered the monitoring room, nor while both of them ate, or when Tori picked herself up, went back to the room she'd dropped her bag in earlier and drew herself a scorchingly hot bath.

Scar tissue took years to heal, be it skin or tendon. Rangerhood had fixed most of the damage and covered up for the rest, keeping her in the appearance of perfect health. With the morphers gone, most of her own power went into maintaining that fully functional state. She had no reserves, and she'd been running on raw power for six hours straight.

By the time the rest of the team got there she was half-asleep in a bath that was no longer hot enough. Someone had gone into her room, but by the time she dragged herself out of the water and gone over there was another bag next to hers, and that was all.

She fell asleep on a mattress she'd spread out, covered in nothing but the towel she'd soaked to try and preserve some hydration in the dry air, and she expected to wake up in pain, cold and alone. She woke up to the darkness of dusk, joints stiff but not aching, warm under a towel too hot to be the one she'd fallen asleep with, and with the weight and warmth of another person at her back.

_Blake,_ was her first thought, hazy with sleep. The Thunder Academy smelled of the desert, dry and sweet, and it didn't take much to imagine the scent saltier, to imagine Blake in the room. Someone had tended to her in the hours she'd slept, and her first thought was of him.

She carefully flipped from her side to her back and then turned her neck. That was Dustin sitting next to her, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched before him.

It was dark enough that she couldn't make out his expression, but she could see that he looked down at her as she looked up at him. Careful and slow, she laid her upper arm solid against the deck before raising her hand.

Dustin threaded their fingers together.

* * *

When she woke up next it was completely dark, and she was alone. She was covered with a blanket and the air was breathable, indicating the soft whirring sound to be a humidifier.

She was wide awake, and starving.

Someone had laid out clothes for her – someone had packed her clothes, because she hadn't. She sat up, feet instinctively tucked under her in a seiza, and reached. She could recognize the clothes by touch: the thin cotton of a plain t-shirt; the laundry-worn feel of the azure wrap-skirt with its beaded hems; and the coarse texture of the denim jacket, the soft and nearly-frayed zones at the seams identifying it as the oldest one in her closet.

Whoever had chosen her clothes had done so with care, and she stopped her breath against the flash-flood of emotion.

The moon had already set. The patio and the deck surrounding it were lit only by the stars, and by the light left on in the kitchen, which was across the yard and two partition-tracks in. She counted six closed partitions including the monitoring room and her own.

There would be someone awake in the monitoring room but, otherwise, she did not expect anyone else awake until first light. Quietly as possible she made herself food, brought supplies over to her room for later and left the kitchen looking as if she had never been through it.

* * *

She ran through the forms until the sky began to lighten and then returned to her room. Moments later, though, the strength of the coffee aroma indicated that Cam was brewing a team-sized batch.

He set up the mat and the portable stove literally at the center of the patio. He also had six cups out. She stared at them, and he followed her eyes with his but said nothing until she asked, "Six?"

"Marah chose to stay home."

For Marah to stay behind without being told to –

Tori knew she should feel more, but she didn't.

* * *

Dustin and Shane also reported for coffee, Shane emerging bleary-eyed from the monitoring room and Dustin from the room next to hers. Dustin and Cam talked; Shane didn't, and neither did she.

It was the last she saw of anyone until the afternoon. She heard them, though: Dustin louder than he had to be, Cam using too many words, Shane's occasional monosyllabic replies followed by utter silence unless that was Blake he'd spoken to.

Blake was yelling a lot.

* * *

Cam said nothing of her dangling her feet over the edge of the cliff, only sat down next to her and passed her the bowl of stir-fry. She wasn't hungry, but the stir-fry had peanut butter, peanuts and five kinds of vegetables in it.

Cam looked away while she forced herself to chew and swallow.

"How bad?" she asked halfway through.

"Which of you complete morons do you refer to?"

She nearly said, _That bad?_ but swallowed a bit of chicken instead, unchewed.

* * *

She scrambled awake at some point during the night with a knife in one hand and power gathering in the other, and she was at the partition leading to the hallway before the sound of bare feet on dirt in familiar patterns of movement resolved into _training,_ not _attacking._

There were breaks in the shuffling of feet, and soft thuds, not the long sweeps of the Earth or Sword forms. The punctures in the rhythm came irregularly, the thuds on the heavier side.

There was nowhere in her pajamas to tuck the knife, so she put it back. Hunting for a jacket or a sweatshirt would have been smarter, but she could no more do that than go back to sleep.

Shane completed the move and turned towards her by the time she descended the third, final step to the patio. At four feet she slowed, paused almost, but somehow pushed herself through one and a half-sized more steps.

Her question came out as the movement of her throat when she swallowed and a half-jerk sideways of her right arm. Shane's answer came out as a shrug.

There were too many things she didn't know about what had happened in the past two days.

"I'm not sorry," she said.

Three seconds, five, seven.

"You're cold," said Shane.

She hadn't dared to grab a jacket or fold in around elbows, she was tempted to hit him and he'd startled her into saying, "Fuck y…" before she bit down on her lip so hard she was surprised she hadn't bitten it off.

"I was fucking going to fucking kill the fucking fucker and this is what you fucking have to fucking _say?_"

There was a several seconds' pause before Shane said, "You're not sorry," as if it was all the explanation anyone could need.

"Fucking hell, Shane!"

"Why?" His exhaustion finally bled out into the open.

"Because it was the right thing to do."

She counted seconds again, until he said: "Not what I asked."

At four seconds, she said, "I don't care."

"Yeah," he breathed out a second later. "Me neither."

* * *

With two hours left until sunrise she was not going back to sleep. She made tea and took the pot outside and two hundred yards away, where the boulders provided minimal privacy.

Cam came half an hour past sunrise, bearing two cups of coffee and an expression that said, _You want breakfast, you come inside._ He handed her one cup and said: "I am done indulging."

One did not call Cam a _son of a bitch_ even on the best of days, _hardass_ was succinct but not nearly poignant enough, and he hadn't graduated to _fucker_ yet. Instead, she raised her cup slightly and tried to offer a smile.

"And quit wallowing, too," he said.

She hoped for the coffee to be scorching, but it was drinkable and, this early in the morning, would go lukewarm fast.

Halfway through, she asked: "How are we doing?"

"Well, that was completely unambiguous."

"No fucking really."

"If by 'we' you mean the team, I would like to point out that no one has thrown anybody off this handy cliff here just yet. As a matter of fact, only Blake is inclined to try, and, at this point? He'd toss off any and all of us. And if by 'we' you mean you and I, then I would like to reiterate that you are a complete and utter retarded moron and, considering the degree of extreme idiocy you have shown over the past days, 'retarded moron' is not in any way redundant."

"I had to do it, Cam."

"No fucking really," he retorted. "That is not where your stupidity is showing."

She looked down at the coffee Cam brought her, and finished it in a gulp.

* * *

Dustin had made the eggs. She knew that because they had corn but no mushrooms and the onion had been fried until brown. Cam stood cross-armed and watched her wolf down half a bagel with the leftover scrambled eggs – she didn't bother to sit down – before forcing her into the monitoring room.

The low table was still there, but it was as ignored as the pot of tea at its middle. Dustin was leaning against the wall to the one side, where the open partition was in his field of vision so long as he didn't deliberately look the opposite way. The fingers of his right hand were moving, weaving a mandala from a thin stream of sand. It took her a split second to locate Shane in a corner to her immediate left, sitting, wearing an air of patient acceptance that suggested it took bullying to make him sit down. On the other side of the one-way force field, Hunter was curled up in the same corner she'd dropped him in two days before, the right half of his face bruised where she'd slammed it into the motel room's floor.

Blake was conspicuously absent.

She took the wall across from the force field, positioning herself at an equal distance from Dustin and Shane. Cam left the partition open and stayed near that corner, which put him between Dustin and herself but closer to her, so as to not block Dustin's line of sight to the open door.

"I'd say we go over this again," he said, having somehow mustered up some causticity, "but given that some of you seem to think that this entire fucking team is comprised of fucking telepaths, I am forced to disabuse you of this notion and hope – against all odds – that you will talk _at all._"

Shane leaned his head back against the wall, face tipped up, eyes closed. "It's all old news, Cam."

"Uh, dude, the last couple of days have been kind of new," said Dustin.

"No," said Shane.

"What Shane is saying, in his monosyllabic way," said Cam after ten seconds had passed and Shane had not moved at all, let alone continued, "is that these past days constitute a continuation of an established pattern."

Dustin's eyes skittered over to Tori before looking away again and settling on the floor.

"Which is clearly untrue," continued Cam.

"Now what did Hunter do?" asked Tori bluntly.

"It's like he doesn't hear a word, except he does. Only he doesn't." Dustin rubbed his nose with his free hand, a nervous gesture much older than the sand mandala. "Am I making sense, like, at all?"

Cam looked at Tori.

"Old too," said Shane. He finally shifted his head down and opened his eyes.

Hunter hearing what he expected to believe, rather than the truth: Dustin pulled in on himself, Cam shifted into a taut near-battle stance, and Tori knew her own spine stiffened.

"Tori?" asked Cam.

"You know my take," she said.

"Actually, Sis, we don't," said Dustin. "Why didn't you – " He gestured awkwardly with his right hand, somehow not losing the mandala.

She didn't close her eyes. She didn't swallow. She didn't fist her hands.

She didn't speak, either.

"Contrary to popular belief," said Cam eventually, "Tori does not actually want Hunter dead."

She swallowed back the _Fuck you_ like bile and retorted: "He lied about the why, okay? Can I fuck off now?"

She stormed out without waiting for fucking permission.

* * *

Cam had left a laptop in her room. A laptop that had a link to the live video stream from the confinement and monitoring rooms on its desktop, side by side with clips from the past days which Cam had apparently deemed relevant.

It was a particularly waterproof laptop. Which wasn't impressed by being thrown through the thin walls and straight through the decked floor, either.

* * *

The patio didn't have a humidifier but the room didn't have enough _room,_ and if Cam would enforce her indoors presence then the rest of them could suck it up.

* * *

The door to the monitoring room had been open when she claimed the patio. Now it was closed, and Dustin was sitting on the steps.

She tweaked a pattern and reached standstill facing him.

"You know you're gonna have to tell me if you're not okay," he said.

She shook her head. She wouldn't have done it for Cam or Blake, but she and Dustin, they held on to those things, and she'd offer the gesture even if remembering it took effort. "Nothing hurts that shouldn't."

"Good," he said. Distracted.

The pattern was easier than the words, messed-up joints and all. "Is this one of those times you'll flip if I thank you?"

Replying seemed to be just as difficult for him as asking had been for her. "Doesn't look like it," he said eventually.

She knew she should walk over and sit down next to him.

She couldn't.

* * *

It wouldn't have surprised her if Cam fixed the cooking rotation so that Dustin had that day's lunch with the thought in mind that she wouldn't pitch in for anyone else but Blake, and in complete disregard of the danger she posed to anyone sharing a kitchen with her.

Cam stayed to do the dishes. Shane showed up just long enough to pick up two bowls, nod and disappear.

Blake didn't show up at all.

* * *

The path down to the rock shelf was almost more of a chute than a proper path. Blake wasn't deaf and she wasn't whatever-enough to try and sneak up on him, which was why she walked in to a narrow-eyed Thunder in a battle stance and why she was not the least bit surprised

"Thanks for not pretending you did that for me," he said with the cool indifference of deep-seated fury.

"The letting him live or the being willing to end him?" she asked, and her light tone wasn't brittle at all this time. "Because the latter?"

Blake picked a big one to keep her from continuing that. "How the fuck did you fucking find him?"

"He fucking texted me the fucking address, how the fuck do you think I fucking found him."

"I didn't know you could fucking lie to me."

"I didn't lie."

"Like you wouldn't be lying if you said you didn't deliberately go for the long end over the clean one?"

Cam would eventually be ready to force the food and water Hunter has been refusing, but Shane couldn't force Hunter worth anything and wouldn't let anyone else.

"That's right," she said, her voice finally showing the sharp edges. "Like it's nothing but the fucking truth that things getting to this is not on me."

She didn't realize what she'd said until Blake's face went taut and blank with rage. The explosion came barely a split-second after, a ball of thunder going off behind her back and sending her hurtling forward through the air.

Blake couldn't do flying kicks, anymore, but he'd learned to emulate the effect.

She rolled into the blast and if Blake hadn't side-stepped then both her feet would have slammed into his ribcage. She'd thrust her arms down by rote before she realized he'd anticipated her, and that was how she managed to deflect the punch he'd aimed at her waist.

She twisted with all the force her back could give her as her legs stopped responding – Blake's other fist had hit the base of her spine – tucking her left arm in to take the brunt of the fall instead of her ribs and then twisted to roll over her other shoulder.

Her legs were working again by the time she needed her feet to hit ground, but Blake had moved and was right in front of her.

He was standing. She was crouching and rising up.

Blake swatted aside the fist she aimed for his crotch and pulled his right foot away from the one she aimed at that knee, but the former was a diversion and the latter was a win-win because the movement upset his balance, putting nearly all his weight on his left foot, and Tori rose from her crouch turning on her right foot, her left connecting a solid snap kick to Blake's left knee.

Blake went down, twisting to fall on his side. Tori's left foot hit the ground almost at the exact spot Blake had been standing at a split second before. She used that leg as a coil and brought her other foot up for another short kick, this one to Blake's waist.

That kick would have kept him down, except Blake grabbed her ankle and rolled from his left on to his right, and Tori had to either roll with it or have her hip dislocated.

She didn't have time enough to stand up before Blake – now six feet away and still on the ground – exploded another thunder ball, this one nearly in her face, and sent her up in the air and straight into the outcrop that shielded that side of the shelf like a ceiling. It was all she could do to protect her head and not break anything as she slammed into the rock and then dropped down, rock debris falling around and over her.

She didn't realize anything was wrong until she dug herself out, several too-long seconds later, and saw the debris falling down in a neat arch between herself and Blake. If she hadn't just crawled out from under half a ton of rock perhaps she would have realized how the debris could be arranging itself into a wall –

She didn't have enough time to turn between the hearing the thud of someone landing and that someone grabbing her from behind, immobilizing her. She clawed in with her element, driving her will like spikes to drain her attacker of water and life.

She might as well have taken a nose-dive down the canyon.

When her senses came back online she was still being held, and Blake was gone.

* * *

She'd broken bones, as a Ranger; they healed back up within hours. But that was over a ton of granite, according to Cam – who had diverted most of the debris away from her back, put up a wall between her and Blake and then pieced the debris back together again into rock – and she was no longer a Ranger, and if Dustin hadn't been only a couple hundred yards away she would have been screwed.

Broken leg or not, she wouldn't have stayed in the patio if Cam and Shane hadn't fucking corralled Blake and her, Cam sitting on the stairs closer to Dustin and her with his palms pressed forcefully against his eyes and Shane sitting by the stairs next to Blake's corner.

Dustin swore at her and Blake. She swore at Blake. Blake dragged his knees up to his chest and shut up.

"What happened?" asked Shane when Dustin was done with her leg.

" – no sense of proportion whatsoever – "

" – fucking blamed it on _us,_ man."

"You guys make me want to cry," said Dustin.

"So cry," she snapped.

His face twisted. "What is wrong with you?" he asked, voice clipped.

Blake snorted loudly. "You want a list?"

"I'll tell you what isn't wrong with me," she said. Serve. Return. "I don't get off on being a doormat."

Blake was on his feet and in a fraction of a second she would have been, too, if Shane hadn't stopped Blake with a word. Blake remained standing, whipping his glare between Shane and her.

"Hunter," said Shane eventually, "has a fucking record of blaming shit on other people that isn't their fault."

"Since when do you think he deserves this?" demanded Blake.

"I don't," said Shane. "He does."

"What he doesn't deserve," spat Tori, struggling to her feet, "is fucking pity. He's had enough, I shouldn't be fucking paying for it."

Dustin's hands were at her back and elbow, but helping her up, supporting her, not holding her back; the patio rang with the echoes of her voice and the others' silence in its wake.

"Sis, you're the only one making yourself pay for anything," said Dustin.

She turned around to face him, shaking off his hands, _Grow up, Dustin, you're too easy,_ on her tongue, but he was just Dustin, somehow, and instead her tears wet his shirt.

* * *

She awoke with her head pounding with a crying headache; with her shoulders sore; cold; leg seizing with the aftershocks of pain; and each time, in the mad seconds between darkness and consciousness, there were someone else's voice, someone else's warmth; Cam dissolving the headache with a rare touch, _fucking idiot_ an endearment; Dustin smoothing away knots and spasms, speaking nonsense; and once, perhaps, Shane, binding power he shouldn't to keep her warm.

When she awoke to first light, though, she woke up alone.

* * *

She dug through for the tea that wasn't tea, melissa and spearmint and lemongrass, and poured in an entire jar of honey when the water reached boiling the second time. She gathered the vegetables between the first and the second cups, while she waited to see if her stomach would refuse the biscuits, and when it didn't she pulled out a knife and started on that salad.

She didn't expect Blake to be the first to arrive. He mustn't have expected her, either, because he stopped two feet outside the kitchen and into the hallway.

She put down the knife and let go of the half-chopped tomato.

"He's my brother," he said. It was an accusation, and he didn't say it with the calm of wrath.

Still looking down at the chopping board, she said: "You're my boyfriend." Arms coiling with the tension of not digging her nails into her palm, she looked up, turned her face to him, and continued: "And I promised I won't let him hurt you again."

His face twisted. It was several seconds before he said: "That wasn't yours to promise, Tor."

"Then what is, Blake?" she asked. She would have made her voice less steady if she could, but he should hear the currents of strain. "What's the point of any of this if we're not watching out for each other?"

"What it isn't," he said, "is this."

She looked down, swallowed, and picked up the knife and the tomato again. "Salad alone doesn't make breakfast," she said.

He stepped into the kitchen.

* * *

Someone had earphones. She brought the laptop to the patio, settled on the stairs nearer the monitoring room, and went through the videos.

* * *

She had made a promise. She'd made several. Blake and Shane had their covenant; she and Hunter had theirs. It was what she kept coming back to, running up against and falling back down to the symbols she drew in the sand.

She had made a promise. A little over a year before, she, Shane and Dustin had been about to be late for class for the next to last time, and they had dubbed her the responsible one. She had kept up the running joke of protesting whenever that epithet had been applied to her even though she had lost the memory of that conversation.

At the time she had probably objected because that had always been the expectation from her, and she did not need that burden from her friends as well; then she objected out of fear Shane and Dustin would take it as permission to not check themselves, trusting to her; and after Sensei had knowingly let Shane take the risk he had, after Blake had helped him, after Cam had failed to speak up against his father, Tori came to treasure that position.

So she made her promises. Some she made silently, in the relative privacy of her heart and mind, to herself as well as to Blake and Shane, to protect them from their own recklessness and devotion. Some she had avowed out loud, to Hunter and herself, that she wouldn't hesitate and nowhere would be too far.

She had made promises. She was not the only one.

* * *

Hunter still sat in the same corner. He did not so much as glance up when she pushed the partition open and closed again, as she walked across the room or while she stood over him.

Blake could rile him up, if he tried; Shane could command him, if he cared for it; Tori sat, crossed legged, in front of him.

"I didn't kill you," she said.

Her voice was crisp, matter-of-fact, slightly annoyed, incongruously normal.

He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken with exhaustion. She wouldn't have expected much lucidity, judging by those eyes.

"You promised," he said.

She hadn't expected these words, too, to taste like bile. "I never promised to kill you."

She didn't spit out the words. She didn't state them with Blake's softly disdainful amusement, either. Even through the haze, Hunter's eyes hardened.

"You promised," he repeated.

"What I promised," she said, leaning forward with her elbows over her knees, "is to kill you if you ever tried to hurt th – anyone on the team again, or if I thought you were going to."

He moved painfully slow, bowing his head to his knees again, shoulders hunching in an effort that made no sense. "I am," he said.

"You have," she said, very dryly, "but this is not the kind of hurt I promised to slit your throat over."

This time, he didn't answer.

"You don't get to make me answer for you," she said. "You had no right to do it then, either."

It was a very deliberate serve. In his right mind, Hunter would have stared her down for it. Hunter was gone to shit, though, and people who were gone to shit fell back to things that had gone beyond habit to instinct.

"Why not," he said, too slow to be described as either spat or a drawl, "you're the res –"

In her right mind, she would have never given Hunter that leverage. Even bracing for impact it hurt, and Tori didn't try to bottle the flare of anger. Hunter had six inches and at least forty pounds on her and she pulled him up by the collar, shoving him up against the wall with two hands and a knee.

"You don't get," she snarled, "to do that. You don't _get,_" she underscored the last word with a shake and another shove, and then changed direction and started a different sentence, "to tell anybody else – " She was breathing hard. "I promised you," she said, voice hoarse, "that I would kill you if I thought it was necessary. You fucking asked me to. You said," and she shook him again, "you trust me."

"I was wrong."

"That's not trust," she said flatly. "It's not trust if any choice I make you don't agree with is wrong, when the entire fucking _point_ is that, supposedly, you don't trust yourself."

She knew that stare. Her words had gone straight over his head.

"They love you, do you get that?" she demanded.

"Of course –"

"No, I don't think you do. You are Blake's brother, no matter how much you fucking suck at the job. You're the man Shane's in love with, no matter how fucked up his reasons. And that is their fucking choice. You hate the idea. I hate it too. Guess what? I don't get to do a fucking thing about it. You, on the other hand? You get to decide how much you suck.

"And right now," she shook him, "right now you suck a hell of a fucking lot. Do you understand a word I'm saying?"

He was still staring at her, but that expression was a little less stunned and a little more intelligent than a few seconds before.

"I made a promise," she said, very softly, "but you made a promise, too. You made more than one. You promised Blake you won't fucking give up. You promised Shane you won't fucking turn your back. You promised _me_ that you'd trust me. And if you can't keep your fucking word, mine isn't worth fuck-all. This?" Her knuckles might have left a bruise on his chest. "This isn't trust."

She let go and stepped back. Amazingly, he did not fall to the floor.

"Think about it," she said, and then turned around and walked right out.

* * *

On the seventh day she awoke to warmth – Dustin and her back to back in a nest of too many blankets – and to the greyness of early dawn. She wouldn't have left Dustin to wake up alone except she could smell toast, and only one of them would be making toast for breakfast.

Blake was indeed in the kitchen, making sandwiches. He didn't look up or angle at her, but wasn't glaringly ignoring her, either. She replied by not pausing as she stepped in and not letting her eyes linger on his face, or his shoulders. In her parents' kitchen this would have been comfortable. A week before it would have been natural to lean past him to get the kettle.

_At some point,_ she thought.

"At some point," said Blake, startling her looking straight into his eyes with less than a foot between them, "at some point, we are going to have to talk about this."


End file.
